


sometimes living is the victory

by girlsarewolves



Category: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Femslash, Final Girl Femslash, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, horror femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-30 14:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11465634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: This wasn't the life Kris ever envisioned for herself. (But she's alive, and that's enough.)





	sometimes living is the victory

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I could very well write about fifty different one-shots that were all basically variations of the same au idea - Kris lives and hooks up with Nancy - but I'm going to try to keep it lower than that. I won't apologize for it, though. Feedback appreciated!
> 
> Warnings: for basically the stuff mentioned in the tags. Nothing is gone into detail, but obviously considering the backstory, some things are acknowledged/referenced.

* * *

This wasn't the life Kris ever envisioned for herself. Some days, that thought dragged her down, had her second-guessing, wishing something - anything - was different. The inescapable fact of it all became an emotional prison for a time, stifling her and all she could think about was all the things she wanted and will never have.  
  
She thought she'd go to college on the coast - west coast, preferably - and make her mother proud at a distance, try new things without the shame of people who had known her since birth watching, ready to praise her or tear her down at a moment's notice.  
  
(Small towns are fueled by gossip, and people are quick to turn against you, harder to sway back onto your side. Nancy learned it years before Kris did.)  
  
Maybe she'd room with Dean afterwards; they'd live near Portland, and the two of them could finally come out and help each other find the right person, no matter the gender. No pressure to settle down with each other when every time they tried it felt so wrong.  
  
She could get away from Jesse, who felt so right when things were good and who tried to force it right when it wasn't.  
  
(She would think of him, of course; and of Nancy, the weird girl down the street who caught Kris looking too long at some of the other girls at school and knew, knew because she was looking at Kris.)  
  
Eventually they'd go their separate ways. They'd find someone; or maybe one would and the other would be content on their own, or maybe both would be. They'd find different places to live, in the same town or somewhere else. Maybe she would travel across the country, see new sights, find new places to settle and call home and struggle to make ends meat. And she'd call her mom after getting home from work each night, and she'd tell her mother how much she loved and missed her, and that she had to flight out to where Kris was, see her home and where she spent her days.  
  
And never, ever go home.  
  
That part had been the one consistent. She never went home.  
  
It wasn't the west coast she ended up on, but the east. It wasn't Dean she roomed with, but Nancy Holbrook. They didn't try to find each other the right person - they stuck together like glue, hands clasping more often than not when they were near. She was saving up for online courses, and rarely ever talked to her mom.  
  
She loved her mom and missed her too, but she didn't want to hear the judgments, the pleas, the dismissive comments. She wouldn't ask for her mom to fly out there, and Nancy never asked her mom out there either.  
  
(They knew their mothers were united in their mutual distaste of each other and the hope that Kris and Nancy would someday realize they weren't meant to be. But they aren't their mothers.)  
  
This wasn't the life Kris envisioned, but it's the life she has. And some days, that thought dragged her down, wishing things were different - that Dean and Jesse and Quentin were all alive, that she'd gone to Nancy when she was sixteen and caught the quiet girl watching her and kissed her right there in front of everyone. That she'd told Jesse she loved him even if she couldn't be with him. That Dean had gotten to find someone who loved him for him, not his money and cool house and loads of tech and gadgets to fill in the void he didn't understand.  
  
That their parents hadn't covered up what they'd been through, that they'd known all along and had learned to live with it from the moment it happened.  
  
That Fred fucking Krueger had never wandered into Springwood and settled down, that someone  - anyone - had seen the ugliness behind his smiles and his hard work and his quiet, unassuming friendliness.  
  
But the past stayed the same, no matter how many times Kris buckled under the weight of the what ifs and what might have beens and the actual horror show she and Nancy had been through.  
  
She'd survived though. She was alive. She liked the small flat where she and Nancy made a home for themselves, with their window garden and the small, black cat they'd adopted and Nancy's art hanging on the walls. She liked the comfort of Nancy's body near hers at night, knowing she'd be there in the morning - alive, breathing, not covered in blood like Jesse had been.  
  
(Sometimes Nancy laid against her, when she was in the right place and needed the full body contact to anchor her there, in the present and not somewhere long ago with someone who'd hurt her over and over. Those nights were the best and the worst nights.)  
  
This wasn't the life Kris had envisioned, but it was hers. And even on the worst days, she loved it.


End file.
